Element Zero

“Hold your fire. I’m a Federal Agent!” I yelled.

The office window exploded and the cubicle across from me was riddled with bullets. I spotted the shooter, a young male, taking cover behind a support column. I fired and clipped his arm. Blood dotted the drywall as he pulled back, but not fast enough. I put the next bullet in his head, and he staggered back against the wall before crumpling to the ground.

I darted out of the office and stepped through the scattered clothing toward the figure. The young man made a choking sound, and red blood ran from his mouth. He’d been human.

Reloading, I stepped past the body. An exit on the far side of the room was the most direct route to the transmitter. That’s where Fawkes would be.

My footsteps echoed down the long, dark corridor in front of me as I moved farther into the building.

Calliope Flax—Third Street Station

When I came out of the tunnel and saw lights again, the railcar was there, like Nico said it would be. There were other people on the platform, some lined up by the wall, others hanging around the train looking for a way on. I showed them my gun and they got out of the way. The scanner turned from red to green when I showed it my military ID tag, and the doors opened to let me on. Some of the seats still had people’s coats and bags on them from when they ran, and there was an open suitcase in the row to my right with most of the clothes pulled out.

I stepped through then turned and stood just inside the doorway looking out. One guy looked like he might try to push his way past me, but he didn’t. The doors closed, and the staring faces on the platform fell away as the train took off. The last thing I saw before disappearing back into the tunnel was two guys on their knees, robbing a dead body.

To hell with this place.

“Confirm military ID,” the computer croaked. I rattled it off.

“Flax, Calliope,” the computer said. “Citizen First Class. Decorated Emet Corporal. Your destination has been preprogrammed. Do you wish to override?”

“No.”

“Please enjoy your trip.”

I hung on to the pole as the train took off down the tunnel, and stood there like a zombie until the dark of the tunnel fell away and the city lights filled up the windows. I watched Alto Do Mundo, that big, fucking tower of rich assholes, get closer as the slums flew past. It made me think about Luis, that kid I met in the tank a million years ago. He used to live there. I wondered if the rest of my squad was there and if they managed to get in. I wondered if it would still even be there when the sun came back up.

Why do they always die?

Luis died hard. The old man who looked after me when I came back from my tour, Buckster, died hard too, but I was just a dreg back then. I was a soldier now. That kid was right next to me. I could have reached out and grabbed her. I was armed and I knew it was coming. She’d saved my life. We were supposed to get out of there together.

Pain drilled into my head and my knees gave out for just a second. A scramble of code streamed by in front of me, as I grabbed the pole next to me and held on. Spit filled my mouth, and my eyes burned. Everything inside me felt fucked up. I checked my wrist and saw two big, dark veins creeping down my forearm, right across the join where the dead hand was grafted on.

Necrotic bleed-through. I had it too. Between that and the revivor nodes that had formed I wondered if they could even fix me, if it even mattered whether I got out of the city or not.

“You could be a champ,” a voice said. I thought someone said it anyway. When I turned around, no one was there.

The car phased out for a second and I was somewhere else. I was back at the Porco Rojo, in the locker room. It was postfight, and I had a butterfly clip over a cut on one cheek. There was a knot on my right wrist and a nasty purple bruise was forming there. It throbbed, but I felt good. I fought hard and I won. The air smelled like a mixture of BO and soap, along with fifty different deodorants and colognes. The smell took me back, and on the train, I smiled.

I remember this.

“I am a champ,” I said. Leaning against the lockers across from me was Tito Gantz, a fight scout. Getting noticed by Tito was a good thing. I was psyched, but I still had my guard up. I didn’t expect to find him back there waiting, and definitely not for me.

“You’re a good fighter,” he said, “but you’re not a champ.”

“I’m on TV.”

Tito snorted. “TV,” he spat out. “Where your show is so deep in the muck, even the fucking data miners can’t find you.”

“You found me.”

“I’m paid to find you,” he said. “That’s my job. I take people like you and put them in front of actual viewers, on actual networks with actual advertisers. You want to knock heads in this hellhole until you finally burn out? Or do you want to at least have a shot?”

“A shot at the big time, huh?” I sneered.

“I’m not psychic,” he said. “I wouldn’t call it the big time, and it’s a shot—that’s all. Maybe you can hold your own and maybe you can’t. You want to find out or not?”

He didn’t oversell. I liked that. It was a rung, just a bottom rung, but sometimes that’s all you needed. It was the first step up, out of the pit, maybe. I grinned and held out my hand, still with the tape on it.

“I—”

Before I could get an answer out, the word fizzled in my mouth. Three guys I’d never seen before came walking into the locker room like they owned the place; two big guys in suits and one smaller guy in a tight silk shirt. He was lean and looked like he spent way too much time in front of a mirror. His duds looked like they cost a fortune, and I’d have bet money the diamond in his ear was real. He had ice-blue eyes, real light, almost gray. When he came closer to us, he smiled, and I saw he was wearing eyeliner.

“Who the fuck are you?” Tito asked. He was pissed, but when the little guy looked over at him, he just shut up and got real interested in the floor.

“Quiet,” he said. “I’m a fan.”

“I got a lot of fans,” Tito said.

“Not of yours,” the guy said. “Of hers. I like to come here. I like to mingle with the thirds. I like to bet on Flax, here, and I almost always win.”

He smiled, looking into my eyes, and I saw his pupils get big.

“Even when I don’t,” he said, “it’s always entertaining.”

He turned to Tito, who was still looking down at the floor.

“She’s not interested,” the little guy said. “Just forget this ever happened, and go back to your business. Both of you.”

Tito looked like he was on dope or something, but even so, he didn’t look sure.

“But I could book her in the Capital,” he said. “I mean, the suburbs, but still, the Capital, man…. ”

The little guy with the eyeliner looked annoyed.

“I’m not driving all the way out there,” he said.

The locker room faded, and I was back on the train. All of a sudden, Alto Do Mundo was practically on top of us. How long had I been zoned out?